City of Vancouver tries to hold back king tides with sand bags

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      A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about aspects of the City of Vancouver's climate-change adaptation strategy.

      The city's report notes that during the last century, the sea level rose by almost 20 centimetres.

      "Moderate projections for global average sea level rise this century are approximately 3 feet (1 m), but a few recent papers have raised the upper limit to 6 feet (2 m)," the report states. "Such forecasts are regularly revised and have generally moved upward over the last decade as the extent of melting in Greenland and Antarctica increased."

      Recently, city work crews were placing sandbags near Locarno Beach in anticipation of another round of "king tides".

      This is a term to describe extreme storm surges, which can cause flooding in low-lying areas.

      These king tides are linked to the alignment of the sun and moon in relation to Earth, which have an impact on tides.

      Obviously, the prospect of flooding under this circumstances increases as sea levels rise higher.

      The next high tide today is at 4:10 p.m. (See the chart below.)

      This week's tide chart shows some pretty high water levels.

      On Saturday, I dropped by Spanish Banks to enjoy a little downtime.

      On that day, there was no evidence of any king tides. (See the photo below). But of course, this was obviously not at the high-water mark.

      Spanish Banks didn't appear to be under siege last weekend.

      That's not to suggest that city work crews weren't taking appropriate action in preparing for what might occur this week.

      Below, you can see how a king tide in the past overran the Kits Beach swimming pool.

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